Ken Purchase - Labour MP

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Question: With a string of poor poll results, is it fair to say that the government has not recovered from the "election that never was" in the autumn?

 

Purchase: I thought that was a serious mistake but I'm not sure it particularly resonated in the constituencies. The press got hot and bothered about it and of course, this dithering tag has been applied to Gordon since then and that is very unhelpful.

 

The actual event itself, I think was a bit overplayed by the media but it has had this lasting effect of branding Gordon a ditherer.

 

It was a mistake and I thought that older and wiser counsel should have prevailed much earlier - it should have been stopped much, much earlier.

 

Question: Does that reflect the relative inexperience of the cabinet?

 

Purchase: These people that Gordon has surrounded himself by are amazingly able but in the end, there is no substitute for experience and you can't blame people for being young.

 

But there were plenty of other people about who let Gordon down by not fighting their way into that conversation, that discussion, that proposal - maybe some more experienced people should have elbowed their way to the frontline and said to Gordon that it was not a good idea.

 

Purchase on the economy 

 

Question: Is how the government handles the current economic turbulence crucial to the outcome of the next election?

 

Purchase: Yes, absolutely. I think that Gordon Brown could be a very, very great prime minister but he has got an awful hole to get out of now.

 

It has been brought about largely by events over which he has had little control but what I am anxious about is that he doesn't try to do a Blair and aggravate the party.

 

Blair seemed to think that by aggravating Labour and taking it off into directions that, even he must have known, the party did not want, that somehow you impress upon the general public just how in charge of the party you are and how like Mrs Thatcher you are. Mrs Thatcher is an ancient memory for most people, certainly for anyone under 40.

 

Politics is like pop music - you are only as good as your last record. New Labour has to think through its position again and recognise that it has to be deeper, it has to be better, it truly has to modernise and not go back to the 19th century for its ideas and privatise everything.

 

I was in Birmingham recently - the home of the great municipalisers - and we could take a few lessons from that and apply them in the modern setting and we might find it a better direction than the one we're going in at the moment.

 

Question: So you feel Brown has not changed the Blairite approach to public service reform?

 

Purchase: I am completely critical of the approach and strategy and I regret to say we are continuing down that path.

 

Much of this stuff was written by people who were not even originally members of the Labour Party but of groups like the SDP, or the Liberal Democrats or even Conservatives and they are driving Labour Party policy and I think that tells us a great deal.

 

They have their views, their understandings, their beliefs, their insights even into how they think society should be moving and what provision there should be within that society but I have an entirely different view - I have a Labour view.

 

Purchase on 42-day detention

 

Question: Will Jacqui Smith gain the support of a majority of the parliamentary Labour Party in her bid to increase pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects to 42 days?

 

Purchase: She will carry me if she has an argument for it. I am very relaxed about the idea of keeping people for as long as you need to keep them as long as there is the reasonable possibility of getting enough evidence to charge them.

 

Given we have built in a judicial review every seven days or so I am quite relaxed about that but she has to come forward with a reason and some statistics and evidence why it is necessary.

 

I was happy to vote for the longest period Tony Blair wanted because at that time they were saying 'this is the cause; this is the reason; this is how we see it.'

 

Since then we have had too many people in senior positions saying that we do not need that length of time. Jacqui has to make the case again and if she doesn't make it, she won't win the day.

 

I think people would be absolutely on her side if she makes the case. We're all worried about the effects of terrorism but she has to make the case.

 

Purchase on Iraq

 

Question: Five years after you resigned as Robin Cook's PPS along with him over the Iraq war and as a current member of the foreign affairs committee, how do you view the situation now?

 

Purchase: It was a major error and we should have listened more carefully to our wiser friends in France, Germany and elsewhere.

 

Instead of trying to make it look as if we were the only ones in step with the Americans, we should have understood that when Johnny is the only one in step, he's probably the one out of step.

 

I recently finished General Sir Mike Jackson's book and he makes some very telling comments about the first 100 days after the fall of Saddam and he blames the Americans' lack of interest in nation-building; and he sees that as the main problem in the post-invasion period when we failed to make a real difference to the lives of ordinary Iraqis and I think that he's right.

 

Clare Short, who made an awful hash of her resignation, was nonetheless absolutely right when she said that she was not convinced or satisfied with the arrangements put in place post-invasion.

 

Robin and others said the same. It is one of the worst thought-through military adventures in the history of the world and has led to the deaths, in quite short order, of close to 800,000 people, including our own soldiers.